


be your compass when you're lost

by darthjamtart



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:42:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthjamtart/pseuds/darthjamtart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison brings Erica and Boyd back from the dead. With some unanticipated side effects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be your compass when you're lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziusura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziusura/gifts).



> Title from “Compass” by Lady Antebellum. Takes place in a nonexistent time after season 3A but before the Argents moved out of their house.

Erica shakes the dirt out of her hair and staggers upright, the scrapes on her knees healing even as she straightens. She’s in the woods, the moon a stark and blinding brightness overhead, as though her eyes are unaccustomed to even that much light. There’s a massive stump beside her, and Boyd, blinking at her from the other side of the stump.

“It’s done,” someone says, and Erica’s eyes are still adjusting, but she stares until the wavering shape resolves into Lydia, arms crossed and mouth pursed, staring into the shadows. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Allison Argent steps forward, and Erica stumbles back, catches herself on the stump and holds, forcing her spine to stiffen and her knees to lock. She ran from Argents before, ran right to her death. She’s done running.

Boyd’s hand wraps around her elbow. She didn’t even notice his approach.

“Erica,” Allison says. “Welcome back.”

Erica bares her teeth, but it’s Boyd who answers, “What did you do?”

“I’m trying to make things right,” Allison says.

“It was Allison’s idea to raise you from the dead,” Lydia adds. “Although, to be fair, it was a group effort.”

There’s a body lying graveyard-still at Lydia’s feet. Stiles. He’s breathing, though, so Erica keeps her attention focused on Allison, on any potential weapons the other girl might suddenly bring to bear.

“Out of the goodness of your heart?” Erica snarls, and then it hits her: a low tug in her gut, the pull of the moon in her claws and teeth. She shoves it down, digs her nails into Boyd’s forearm when he shifts his weight like he wants to run. They’re not running. They’re _not_.

Allison lifts her chin. “You shouldn’t have died. Just because I didn’t kill you doesn’t mean that wasn’t at least partially on me.”

“Was this...safe?” Boyd asks. Lydia laughs, short and sharp.

“No. And it’s not like we could just give you your lives back, free and clear.” Lydia kneels as Stiles stirs, touching his forehead, then his wrist when he doesn’t wake. “Stiles made the spell work, but he’s been unconscious for nearly two hours. We used Allison as the anchor, so if she dies, so do the two of you.”

“And you?” Erica asks, narrowing her eyes at Lydia. “You seem fine.”

Lydia glares back at her. “Yes, well. Apparently being a Banshee makes me the perfect conduit for this sort of thing. I was already connected to death.”

Erica glances at Allison, then turns back to Lydia. “I don’t want to be tied to her,” she says. “Can you undo it?”

“Not without killing you both,” Lydia says. “Again.” She shrugs elegantly. “Your call, I guess.”

Erica looks back at Allison, who’s watching them impassively. “Don’t think this makes us even,” she spits out, and sits down to wait for Stiles to wake up.

***

It starts as a low hum, a buzzing in Erica’s ear. She shakes her head to clear the sound but it doesn’t help. On the other side of the loft, Derek’s creepy uncle raises an eyebrow at her. Erica sneers back — just because he came back from the dead first doesn’t mean he’s some sort of trendsetter. She didn’t _ask_ for this.

Next to her, Boyd shifts, fidgets. “What’s that sound?” he asks, and Erica turns to face him, startled.

“You hear it, too?” she asks.

“I don’t hear anything,” Derek’s creepy uncle announces, and Erica waves a dismissive hand at him.

“Shut up,” she says, but now that she’s thinking about it she can’t hear anything either, not really. It’s more like her bones are vibrating. She can feel it in her teeth. “Let’s go,” she says to Boyd, grabbing his hand and tugging him out of the loft with her.

The vibration coalesces as they walk, becoming more like a pulse. “Cold, warm, hot,” Erica murmurs, the stupid game she’d played as a kid to find something hidden. They’re getting closer.

The pulse slows, fades, stops as they approach the Argent house. “To hell with this,” Boyd says, and Erica wants to agree, wants to walk away, but she can’t seem to make her feet move. Boyd, too, is frozen beside her, his whole body straining to pull away.

Well. She’d sworn she was done running. “How bad could it be?” Erica asks, like the basement of this house isn’t one of her last memories before an alpha snapped her neck. Boyd stares at her incredulously, but follows easily enough when she marches up to the front door and knocks sharply.

Allison’s father answers the door. He hides it well, but the flare of shock and alarm in his eyes is echoed by the rapid thump of his heartbeat. “Well,” he says, after a moment. “I can’t say I was expecting you.” He pauses, grits his teeth, and then adds, “Is there something I can do to help you?”

“Is Allison home?” Erica asks, even though she already knows the answer.

Allison’s dad hesitates, then swings the door open wide, stepping out of the way. “Upstairs.”

It’s a nice house. Erica hadn’t gotten a chance to see much of it, the last time. She hesitates, catching sight of the closed door that leads to the basement, then forces herself to keep moving, up the stairs and down the hall to Allison’s room.

Allison’s sitting at her desk when they enter. Her eyes widen but she makes no move to rise, just leans back in her chair and cocks her head expectantly. Erica strides right into her personal space, bends over the chair, and cups Allison’s face with a clawed hand, ready to shred open her pretty little face, maybe squeeze her neck until her eyes bulge and her lungs want to burst. Instead, something snaps taut into place, a leaden sensation. Erica yanks her hand back and reels away, clutching for Boyd.

Allison yelps, stumbling to her feet, and stops short, staring at them. “What _was_ that?” she gasps.

Erica looks at Boyd, who reaches, slowly and carefully, for Allison’s hand. She meets him halfway, and they both reach for Erica as one.

“You’re the anchor,” Boyd says to Allison. “You’re _our_ anchor.”

“This wasn’t my intention,” Allison says, and Erica laughs meanly.

“Of course it wasn’t, sugar. You never _intend_ any of it, do you?”

She can see the protest on Allison’s face, but it’s Boyd who speaks. “That’s not fair,” he says. “You were dead longer than I was. There’s a lot you missed.”

Boyd has always, always been on her side. “Apparently,” Erica snaps, and stomps out of the room, dragging her heel across the carpet at the threshold hard enough to tear.

***

She finds Stiles at the lacrosse field, yelling something about cheaters at Scott, who’s laughing so hard he’s practically doubled over. “Hey, hold on a second,” Stiles calls to Scott, once he catches sight of her, and jogs over to join her by the bleachers.

“You did the spell,” Erica says, and Stiles nods. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his skin looks pastier than usual.

“Sort of, I mean. It really did take all three of us. Without Lydia acting as conduit, we wouldn’t have been able to bring you back from the dead. But a conduit can’t be an anchor, and I couldn’t anchor _and_ be the catalyst. Derek probably would have offered — I mean, you were in _his_ pack, after all. But he left a while ago. No one’s heard from him in weeks. Hey, maybe you can be in Scott’s pack!”

She hasn’t been part of Derek’s pack for a long time. She gave up that protection, trying to run. “I don’t know if I can,” she says. Across the field, Scott is failing miserably at pretending not to eavesdrop. “The spell, it bound us to Allison. She feels like — it’s not the same, but she feels like an alpha, now. Like _my_ alpha.”

Stiles frowns. “Okay, that’s weird.”

Erica snorts. “Tell me about it.”

***

Lydia sits down next to her, uninvited, at a small cafe where Erica has failed to order so much as a black coffee because she’s not carrying a wallet. “Get out,” Erica snaps, and Lydia arches an eyebrow and crosses her legs at the ankle.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware you owned this cafe,” Lydia says. She slides a paper cup across the table and Erica fights the impulse to shove it away, splash the damn thing all over the floor. She’s angry, but not at the baristas.

“I didn’t ask for this,” she says instead.

“The latte?” Lydia asks.

“That. The spell.”

“You were dead,” Lydia points out. “You couldn’t ask.”

“It was my death,” Erica says. “I asked Derek for the bite, you know.”

Lydia shakes her head, takes a sip of her own coffee.

“I knew he was just telling me what I wanted to hear,” Erica says. “But that didn’t matter.” She bites her lip, scowling when she doesn’t encounter the slick glide of red lipstick. Another thing gone, like her wallet.

“You wanted the illusion of choice, even if there wasn’t any real choice?” Lydia asks, and Erica hates her, hates everyone. Even Derek, who gave her exactly what she asked for: an escape from the seizures, the opportunity to make people see her the way she wanted them to. She knew he was playing her even before he intruded on her space, let her feel the heat of his body through her thin hospital gown. It was a game, but the playing could have been real, could have been hers.

She can’t say yes, even if it’s true.

Her ears are buzzing again. She can feel Allison’s heartbeat from all the way across town, as though it’s her own. Someone else’s life pulsing in her veins. Erica shoves her chair back and grabs the latte on her way out the door. She’s hungry, after all. Maybe being resurrected burns calories.

There’s pizza on the desk, still hot enough for the cheese to burn the roof of her mouth, when Erica gets back to the Argent house. She doesn’t knock, just slips into Allison’s room, going from roof to window with an easy grace. Boyd is seated at the foot of Allison’s bed, and Erica glares down at him, hands on her hips. She can hear Allison washing her hands in the bathroom down the hall.

“How are you so okay with this?” Erica demands. “We’re _stuck_ with her, whether we like it or not, and if we don’t want to end up back six feet under we’re supposed to what, keep her safe?”

Boyd shrugs. “It’s not so bad,” he says. “Belonging. And it feels right, being here.” His lips curve into a gentle smile as Allison enters the room.

That smile was _hers_. _Boyd_ was hers. Erica wheels on Allison, ready to strike, but her body betrays her, as fickle as when seizures dropped her on the floor. She can’t sustain her anger, not with Allison’s calm, steady heartbeat soothing her own.

“I _hate_ this,” Erica snarls, and feels the sympathetic skip of Allison’s pulse, even as her face stays utterly serene.

“I know,” Allison says. “I’m sorry.” Their fingers brush as Allison hands her a slice of pizza on a paper plate, and Erica flinches back. It feels _right_ , just like Boyd said, and Erica didn’t ask for this, never wanted this. She chews her pizza morosely, sagging to the carpet to sit by Boyd, their shoulders pressed together.

Allison is watching them. Erica glares half-heartedly back.

“I’m not trying to take him from you,” Allison says abruptly. “I’m trying to do better. To _be_ better. I want to protect both of you.”

“Fine,” Erica says. “You want to protect us? Stay alive.”

“Trust me,” Allison says wryly. “That is definitely part of my plan.”

Boyd closes his hand around Erica’s, squeezing gently. She squeezes back, narrowing her eyes at Allison. “And you’re just totally fine with being our anchor?” Erica asks.

Allison’s nose wrinkles. It’s stupidly adorable, and Erica looks away. “It wouldn’t have been my first choice,” Allison admits, “but yes, I am.”

Erica sets her paper plate aside and pushes herself to her knees. Allison scoots forward in her desk chair to meet her halfway when Erica beckons, and Erica grabs her wrist as soon as she’s close enough. “What does this feel like to you?” Erica asks, and Allison closes her eyes and sighs, leaning closer.

“Like coming home,” Allison says, and Erica smiles, scraping a nail gently over the pulse point on Allison’s wrist, just hard enough to leave a faint white line. Allison gasps, eyes flashing open, bright and mostly black.

“The anchor travels with the ship,” Erica muses, and the alarm that crosses Allison’s face is softened when Erica slides a hand into her hair, stroking, then tugging softly to tilt Allison’s face closer to her own. “You’d come with us, if we ran again, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Allison whispers, and Erica kisses her, sweetly at first, then nipping at Allison’s lower lip when Allison kisses her back. Behind her, Boyd wraps his hand around the curve of Erica’s hip, presses his mouth to the side of her neck.

Erica has everything she never asked for, and a few things she did. It could be worse, she thinks. Allison’s free hand finds her waist and stops, waiting for permission, and Erica pulls her forward out of the chair until Allison is straddling her, Boyd supporting them both as Allison drags her mouth down Erica’s jaw to taste the spot Boyd was just kissing. Allison’s hair tickles Erica’s nose and she brushes it out of the way, curls her tongue around the edge of Allison’s ear and says, “You’re ours. You’re _mine_ ,” grinning when Allison responds with a moan and a sharp rotation of her hips, rocking against Erica’s waist.

“We’ll take care of you,” Boyd murmurs, and Erica isn’t sure if he’s talking to her or to Allison, but maybe, she thinks, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe they can all take care of each other.

And then Allison’s hand slips under Erica’s shirt, and Erica doesn’t want to think anymore at all.


End file.
